Panama Papers Scandal Reaches FIFA, Messi

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the release of 11 million documents detailing some shady financial dealings of the world's shadiest characters involved a few members of the world's shadiest sports organization. The Panama Papers data dump, highlighting the pervasive use of offshore accounts and tax havens to skirt tax laws, appears to have implicated both FIFA's new president and its ethics lawyer.

A little more surprising, to those who hadn't been following his tax evasion case, is that the world's best and least shady player, Lionel Messi, was also caught up in the scandal. It's the latest controversy in a sport not so much rocked by financial scandals as it has been defined by them.

FIFA's new president, Gianni Infantino, elected to that office a scant six weeks ago, is already facing his first corruption crisis after the Panama Papers leak linked him to a series of suspicious TV rights deals during his time at UEFA. The scheme, if there is one, is a little complex: Infantino was legal counsel for UEFA when it sold television broadcasting rights to a company owned and run by Hugo Jinkis, who, with his son, is currently under house arrest in Argentina for allegedly handing over "millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to football executives to obtain and retain media and marketing rights."

Jinkis's company then resold the rights enormous markups. Infantino's role in the sales isn't perfectly clear, but this is the same kind of deal that led to the sweeping indictments last year. Indictments which, along with the Panama Papers, implicate business associates of Juan Pedro Damiani, a lawyer and member of FIFA's ethics committee whose firm "worked for seven offshore companies linked to accused money launderer, and former FIFA vice president, Eugenio Figueredo," and is also linked to the Jinkises.

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Tarnished Twenty is a view of sports from a legal perspective, addressing how the law impacts athletes, teams and the sports industry at all stages and levels. The FindLaw Sports Law Blog features sports law news and info about sports figures in trouble with the law. FindLaw's Tarnished Twenty Blog takes its name from the original and infamous "Findlaw's Football Tarnished Twenty," a ranking system retired in 2000 that raised awareness of big-time college football's troubled relationship with the law. Have a comment or tip? Write to us.